Guess what's on the receiving end of more NASA dollars for SLS? NASA brought a smile to faces of Boeing shareholders this week with the announcement that it would be ordering 10 Space Launch System (SLS) core stages from the US aviation giant for Artemis rocket launches to the Moon. Although paying for the things could be tricky. The news came as NASA was trumpeting the arrival of the …
Pushing the deadline back from 2028 to Keep America Great for Our Fearless Leader's Perfect Legacy!!
Of course, by 2024 Trump will either be enjoying his newly-created constitutional right to unlimited terms or, lacking that ploy, will surely be in office for at least the two extra years he has mused that he is owed due to Democrat's stalling of The Don's initiatives (2018-2019) equaling at least his inevitable (?) 2nd term + those 2 extra years = a decade-long debacle...
Trump became President 2017-01-20 so everyone is stuck with him (or Pence) until 2021-01-20. The next President is there until 2025-01-20 which is why it was possible to sell a 2024 Moon landing to Trump. That date is only remotely possible if everything works as anticipated first time with no complications. As this is rocket science, there is no chance of that.
Bridenstein did give a clear answer regarding funding: extra money cannot move the planned 2028 Moon landing to 2024. As that was not strictly an answer to the questions politicians were asking, they pretended that there is an amount of money that provides a 2024 landing but NASA will not tell them what it is. Although extra money will not help, reduced or delayed funding will cause delays.
I think this purchase of 10 SLS cores demonstrates Shelby's and Boeing's complete confidence that Starship, Super Heavy and low earth orbit refuelling will be working before SLS sends anyone to the Moon.
"so everyone is stuck with him (or Pence) until 2021-01-20."
Sorry, but anyone who believes the Trumps will be leaving the White House in 20-01-20 is mistaken. As the founding member of the Trump Presidential Dynasty, President D. Trump and his family has no intention of leaving the White House in the foreseeable future. Impeachment or no impeachment!
It's easy, just put him in a room with a custom feed from Fox News which only shows clips of how bigly Great President Trump is, and have some impressionists ring him up periodically pretending to be world leaders telling him what a stable genius he is and he'll be happy as a clam.
Out of interest, if both Trump and Pence are impeached then who becomes President?
They wouldn't be impeached at the same time. If the president is impeached, the VP becomes president and is then able to appoint a VP with senate confirmation. If a VP is impeached, the president is able to appoint a VP with senate confirmation.
So there is no choice of Nancy Pelosi becoming president, and if this scenario happened Trump would obviously be the first one impeached so the president would become whoever Pence appointed and got confirmed by the senate. My hunch would be someone like Lindsey Graham who had been in the senate for years.
I don't see any chance of Pence being impeached. Impeaching Trump would be disruptive enough, and even if Pence was found to have committed impeachable offenses I think democrats would leave him alone and let voters decide. The "let the voters decide" thing doesn't work for Trump anyone now that's been show to be actively blackmailing foreign leaders to help him in the upcoming election. Who knows what other ways he's using his powers of office in an unconstitutional manner to help his chances? With a lackey AG he could cook up a false investigation into almost anything against his eventual democratic nominee to give him a chance to repeat his "lock her up" mantra. Child porn? Terrorism? Who knows how low he would stoop to get another term and delay his day of reckoning?
And, of course, impeachment does not remove someone from office. Impeachment and conviction do. And conviction is in the hands of the Senate, which is far friendlier to both Trump and Pence than the House is.
That said, I don't see anything in the Constitution which prevents the House from impeaching both the President and the Vice President in separate Articles of Impeachment at the same time, or in overlapping periods; or which prevents the Senate from convicting both of them more or less simultaneously. Certainly a hostile Congress could impeach and convict the President, then refuse to confirm a new Vice President until the VP had also been convicted. In short, as far as I can tell, it's possible that the impeachment process could be used to elevate the Speaker, or anyone else in the line of succession, to the presidency. It's just vanishingly unlikely.
Given that you need 67 senators to convict, you would need plenty of republicans to go along with it. They simply wouldn't be willing to allow a republican president's misdeeds to elevate a democrat to the white house. If they get to the point where they put country over party and vote to convict one of their own, that doesn't mean they are willing to sell out their party and voters by putting a democrat in office.
Even if they delayed a day or two between votes that would be enough to time to schedule a vote to confirm a replacement for one who would become president after both were convicted. And if it was someone "normal" like Graham they'd probably get pretty close to 100-0 for that replacement because everyone on both sides would just be relieved to put the chaos behind them.
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